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A man who threatened to kill Democratic election officials pleads guilty
Court Center |
2024/10/29 16:01
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A Colorado man repeatedly made online threats about killing the top elections officials in his state and Arizona — both Democrats — as well as a judge and law enforcement agents, according to a guilty plea he entered Wednesday.
Teak Ty Brockbank, 45, acknowledged to a federal judge in Denver that his comments were made “out of fear, hate and anger,” as he sat dressed in a khaki jail uniform before pleading guilty to one count of transmitting interstate threats. He faces up to five years in prison when he’s sentenced on Feb. 3.
Brockbank’s case is the 16th conviction secured by the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force, which Attorney General Merrick Garland formed in 2021 to combat the rise of threats targeting the election community.
Earlier this year, French actor Judith Godrèche called on France’s film industry to “face the truth” on sexual violence and physical abuse during the Cesar Awards ceremony, France’s version of the Oscars. “We can decide that men accused of rape no longer rule the (French) cinema,” Godrèche said.
“As we approach Election Day, the Justice Department’s warning remains clear: anyone who illegally threatens an election worker, official, or volunteer will face the consequences,” Garland said in a statement.
Brockbank did not elaborate Wednesday on the threats he made, and court documents outlining the plea agreement were not immediately made public. His lawyer Thomas Ward declined to comment after the hearing.
However, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Colorado said in statement that the plea agreement included the threats Brockbank made against the election officials — identified in evidence as Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold and former Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, now the state’s governor.
Griswold has been outspoken nationally on elections security and has received threats in the past over her insistence that the 2020 election was secure. Her office says she has gotten more frequent and more violent threats since September 2023, when a group of voters filed a lawsuit attempting to remove former President Donald Trump from Colorado’s primary ballot.
“I refuse to be intimidated and will continue to make sure every eligible Republican, Democrat, and Unaffiliated voter can make their voices heard in our elections,” Griswold said in a statement issued after Brockbank’s plea.
Investigators say Brockbank began to express the view that violence against public officials was necessary in late 2021. According to a detention motion, Brockbank told investigators after his arrest that he’s not a “vigilante” and hoped his posts would simply “wake people up.” He has been jailed since his Aug. 23 arrest in Cortez, Colorado.
Brockbank criticized the government’s response to Tina Peters, a former Colorado county clerk convicted this year for allowing a breach of her election system inspired by false claims about election fraud in the 2020 presidential race, according to court documents. He also was upset in December 2023 after a divided Colorado Supreme Court removed Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot.
In one social media post in August 2022, referring to Griswold and Hobbs, Brockbank said: “Once those people start getting put to death then the rest will melt like snowflakes and turn on each other,” according to copies of the threats included in court documents. In September 2021, Brockbank said Griswold needed to “hang by the neck till she is Dead Dead Dead,” saying he and other “every day people” needed to hold her and others accountable, prosecutors said.
Brockbank also posted in October 2021 that he could use his rifle to “put a bullet” in the head of a state judge who had overseen Brockbank’s probation for his fourth conviction for driving under the influence, under the plea agreement, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors say Brockbank also acknowledged posting in July 2022 that he would shoot without warning any federal agent who showed up at his house. Prosecutors earlier said in court documents that a half dozen firearms were found in his home after his arrest, including a loaded one near his front door, even though he can’t legally possess firearms due to a felony conviction of attempted theft by receiving stolen property in Utah in 2002.
The investigation was launched in August 2022 after Griswold’s office notified federal authorities of posts made on Gab and Rumble, an alternative video-sharing platform that has been criticized for allowing and sometimes promoting far-right extremism, according to court documents.
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VA asks US Supreme Court to reinstate removals of 1,600 voter registrations
Headline News |
2024/10/25 23:02
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Virginia on Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene to allow the state to remove roughly 1,600 voters from its rolls that it believes are noncitizens.
The request comes after a federal appeals court on Sunday unanimously upheld a federal judge’s order restoring the registrations of those 1,600 voters, whom the judge said were illegally purged under an executive order by the state’s Republican governor.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin says he ordered the daily removals in an effort to keep noncitizens from voting. But U.S. District Judge Patricia Giles ruled late last week that Youngkin’s program was illegal under federal law because it systematically purged voters during a 90-day “quiet period” ahead of the November election.
The Justice Department and a coalition of private groups sued to block Youngkin’s removal program earlier this month. They argued that the quiet period is in place to ensure that legitimate voters aren’t removed from the rolls by bureaucratic errors or last-minute mistakes that can’t be rectified in a timely manner.'
The ruling Sunday from the three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, sided with the judge who ordered the restoration of voters’ registrations.
The appeals court said Virginia is wrong to assert that it is being forced to restore 1,600 noncitizens to the voter rolls. The judges found that Virginia’s process for removing voters established no proof that those purged were actually noncitizens.
Youngkin’s executive order, issued in August, required daily checks of data from the Department of Motor Vehicles against voter rolls to identify noncitizens.
State officials said any voter identified as a noncitizen was notified and given two weeks to dispute their disqualification before being removed. If they returned a form attesting to their citizenship, their registration would not be canceled.
The plaintiffs said that, as a result of the program, a legitimate voter and citizen could have his or her registration canceled simply by checking the wrong box on a DMV form. The plaintiffs presented evidence showing that at least some of those removed were in fact citizens.
A similar lawsuit was filed in Alabama, and a federal judge there last week ordered the state to restore eligibility for more than 3,200 voters who had been deemed ineligible noncitizens. Testimony from state officials in that case showed that roughly 2,000 of the 3,251 voters who were made inactive were actually legally registered citizens.
The appeal filed to the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday by Virginia’s Republican attorney general, Jason Miyares, asks the high court to intervene by Tuesday. Without any intervention, the injunction issued last week by Giles requires Virginia to notify affect voters and local registrars by Wednesday of the restorations she ordered.
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Kenya’s deputy president pleads not guilty in impeachment process
Legal Watch |
2024/10/22 14:54
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Kenya’s deputy president, who faces impeachment, pleaded not guilty in a senate hearing Wednesday to all allegations including corruption, inciting ethnic divisions and support for anti-government protests that saw demonstrators storm the country’s parliament.
Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, who has called the allegations politically motivated, could be the first sitting deputy president impeached in Kenya.
The case highlights the friction between him and President William Ruto — something that Ruto once vowed to avoid after his past troubled relationship as deputy to Kenya’s previous president, Uhuru Kenyatta.
Gachagua has said he believes the impeachment process has Ruto’s blessing, and has asked legislators to make their decision “without intimidation and coercion.”
The tensions risk introducing more uncertainty for investors and others in East Africa’s commercial hub. Court rulings this week allowed the parliament and senate to proceed with the impeachment debate, despite concerns over irregularities raised by the deputy president’s lawyers.
The impeachment motion was approved in parliament last week and forwarded to the senate. Gachagua’s legal team will have Wednesday and Thursday to cross-examine witnesses, and the senate will vote Thursday evening.
Under the Kenyan Constitution, the removal from office is automatic if approved by both chambers, though Gachagua can challenge the action in court — something he has said he would do.
Kenya’s president has yet to publicly comment on the impeachment process. Early in his presidency, he said he wouldn’t publicly humiliate his deputy.
Ruto, who came to office claiming to represent Kenya’s poorest citizens, has faced widespread criticism for his efforts to raise taxes in an effort to find ways to pay off foreign creditors. But the public opposition led him to shake up his cabinet and back off certain proposals. |
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Texas Supreme Court halts execution of man in shaken baby case
Court Center |
2024/10/18 13:24
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The Texas Supreme Court halted Thursday night’s scheduled execution of a man who would have become the first person in the U.S. put to death for a murder conviction tied to a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome.
The late-night ruling to spare for now the life of Robert Roberson, who was convicted of killing his 2-year-old daughter in 2002, capped a flurry of last-ditch legal challenges and weeks of public pressure from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers who say he is innocent and was sent to death row based on flawed science.
In the hours leading up to the ruling, Roberson had been confined to a prison holding cell a few feet from America’s busiest death chamber at the Walls Unit in Hunstville, waiting for certainty over whether he would be taken to die by lethal injection.
“He was shocked, to say the least,” said Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesperson Amanda Hernandez, who spoke with Roberson after the court stayed his execution. “He praised God and he thanked his supporters. And that’s pretty much what he had to say.”
She said Roberson would be returned to the Polunsky Unit, about 45 miles (72 kilometers) to the east, where the state’s male death row is located.
Roberson, 57, was convicted of killing of his daughter, Nikki Curtis, in the East Texas city of Palestine. His lawyers and some medical experts say his daughter died not from abuse but from complications related to pneumonia.
It is rare for the Texas Supreme Court — the state’s highest civil court — to get involved in a criminal matter.
But how the all-Republican court wound up stopping Roberson’s execution in the final hours underlined the extraordinary maneuvers used by a bipartisan coalition of state House lawmakers who have come to his defense.
Rejected by courts and Texas’ parole board in their efforts to spare Roberson’s life, legislators on Wednesday tried a different route: issuing a subpoena for Roberson to testify before a House committee next week, which would be days after he was scheduled to die. The unusual plan to buy time, some of them conceded, had never been tried before.
They argued that executing Roberson before he could offer subpoenaed testimony would violate the Legislature’s constitutional authority. Less than two hours before Roberson’s execution, a judge in Austin sided with lawmakers and paused the execution, but that was then reversed by an appeals panel. The Texas Supreme Court then weighed in with its order, ending a night of uncertainty.
Roberson is scheduled to testify before the committee Monday.
“This is an innocent man. And there’s too much shadow of a doubt in this case,” said Democratic state Rep. John Bucy. “I agree this is a unique decision today. We know this is not a done deal. He has a unique experience to tell and we need to hear that testimony in committee on Monday.”
Gov. Greg Abbott had authority to delay Roberson’s punishment for 30 days. Abbott has halted only one imminent execution in nearly a decade as governor and has not spoken publicly about the case.
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Nebraska high court to decide if residents with felony records can vote
Legal Watch |
2024/10/15 20:25
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Thousands of Nebraska residents with felony records will learn Wednesday whether they’ll be able to vote in next month’s hotly contested elections after the state Supreme Court issues its ruling on a lawsuit seeking to restore their voting rights.
The state’s high court heard arguments in August on a lawsuit challenging a decision by the state’s top election officials to ignore a new state law restoring the voting rights of those who have been convicted of a felony.
The decision comes just days ahead of state deadlines to register to vote in the Nov. 5 general election.
Brad Christian-Sallis, a director at the nonprofit civic engagement organization Nebraska Table, said he has heard from those with felony criminal records who were looking forward to voting not just in the presidential race, but on state and local races that affect their neighborhoods and schools.
“It’s absolutely caused a lot of anxiety and frustration,” he said.
Secretary of State Bob Evnen ordered county election officials not to register those with felony convictions for the November election after the state’s attorney general, Mike Hilgers, said in July that the new law was unconstitutional. Evnen had sought that opinion from Hilgers.
The American Civil Liberties Union sued on behalf of several Nebraska residents who would be denied the right to vote under Evnen’s directive. Because Evnen’s move came only weeks ahead of the November election, the ACLU asked to take the lawsuit directly to the Nebraska Supreme Court, and the high court agreed.
Evnen’s order could keep more than 7,000 Nebraska residents from voting in the upcoming election, the ACLU has said. Many of them reside in Nebraska’s Omaha-centered 2nd Congressional District, where both the race for president and Congress could be in play. In an otherwise reliably Republican state that, unlike most others, splits its electoral votes, the district has twice awarded an electoral vote to Democratic presidential candidates — once to Barack Obama in 2008 and again to Joe Biden in 2020.
Civic Nebraska, a voting rights advocacy group, is a plaintiff in the lawsuit seeking to force state officials to enact the new law.
“Whenever the decision comes, we have a plan to run registration drives and get the word out,” the group’s voting rights restoration coordinator, Noah Rhoades, said in an open letter to voters last week.
The law, passed by the Nebraska Legislature this year and often referred to by its bill number, LB20, immediately restores the voting rights of people who have successfully completed the terms of their felony sentences.
The attorney general’s opinion says the new law violates the state constitution’s separation of powers because he believes only the Nebraska Board of Pardons has the authority to restore a person’s voting rights through a pardon.
Pardons are hard to get in Nebraska, which requires those convicted of felonies to wait 10 years after their terms to even file an application for a pardon, and are rarely granted. The Pardons Board is made up three members: Evnen, Hilgers and Gov. Jim Pillen. All three are Republicans who have been vocal about their opposition to restoring the voting rights of those with felony records.
Hilgers’ opinion also found unconstitutional a 2005 state law that restored the voting rights of people with felony convictions two years after they complete the terms of their sentences. If that law is upheld as unconstitutional, it could disenfranchise tens of thousands of Nebraskans who have been eligible to vote for the last 19 years.
Evnen has said he has not taken steps to remove from the voter rolls those with felony convictions who had legally registered to vote under the 2005 law. But that has done little to assuage the concern of people who have been able to legally voted for years, Christian-Sallis said.
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Supreme Court grapples with governor’s 400-year veto, calling it ‘crazy’
Law Firm Business |
2024/10/12 18:48
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Justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court said Wednesday that Gov. Tony Evers’ creative use of his expansive veto power in an attempt to lock in a school funding increase for 400 years appeared to be “extreme” and “crazy” but questioned whether and how it should be reined in.
“It does feel like the sky is the limit, the stratosphere is the limit,” Justice Jill Karofsky said during oral arguments, referring to the governor’s veto powers. “Perhaps today we are at the fork in the road ... I think we’re trying to think should we, today in 2024, start to look at this differently.”
The case, supported by the Republican-controlled Legislature, is the latest flashpoint in a decades-long fight over just how broad Wisconsin’s governor’s partial veto powers should be. The issue has crossed party lines, with Republicans and Democrats pushing for more limitations on the governor’s veto over the years.
In this case, Evers made the veto in question in 2023. His partial veto increased how much revenue K-12 public schools can raise per student by $325 a year until 2425. Evers took language that originally applied the $325 increase for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years and instead vetoed the “20” and the hyphen to make the end date 2425, more than four centuries from now.
“The veto here approaches the absurd and exceeds any reasonable understanding of legislative or voter intent in adopting the partial veto or subsequent limits,” attorneys for legal scholar Richard Briffault, of Columbia Law School, said in a filing with the court ahead of arguments.
That argument was cited throughout the oral arguments by justices and Scott Rosenow, attorney for Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce Litigation Center, which handles lawsuits for the state’s largest business lobbying group and brought the case.
The court should strike down Evers’ partial veto and declare that the state constitution forbids the governor from striking digits to create a new year or to remove language to create a longer duration than the one approved by the Legislature, Rosenow argued.
Finding otherwise would give governors unlimited power to alter numbers in a budget bill, Rosenow argued.
Justices appeared to agree that limits were needed, but they grappled with where to draw the line.
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US court to review civil rights lawsuit alleging environmental racism
Legal Watch |
2024/10/07 20:28
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A federal appellate court is set to hear oral arguments Monday in a civil rights lawsuit alleging a south Louisiana parish engaged in racist land-use policies to place polluting industries in majority-Black communities.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans is reviewing a lawsuit filed by community groups claiming St. James Parish “intentionally discriminated against Black residents” by encouraging industrial facilities to be built in areas with predominantly Black populations “while explicitly sparing White residents from the risk of environmental harm.”
The groups, Inclusive Louisiana, Rise St. James and Mt. Triumph Baptist Church, seek a halt to future industrial development in the parish.
The plaintiffs note that 20 of the 24 industrial facilities were in two sections of the parish with majority-Black populations when they filed the complaint in March 2023.
The parish is located along a heavily industrialized stretch of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, known as the Chemical Corridor, often referred to by environmental groups as “Cancer Alley” because of the high levels of suspected cancer-causing pollution emitted there.
The lawsuit comes as the federal government has taken steps during the Biden administration to address the legacy of environmental racism. Federal officials have written stricter environmental protections and committed tens of billions of dollars in funding.
In the Louisiana case, U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier of the Eastern District of Louisiana in November 2023 dismissed the lawsuit largely on procedural grounds, ruling the plaintiffs had filed their complaint too late. But he added, “this Court cannot say that their claims lack a basis in fact or rely on a meritless legal theory.”
Barbier said the lawsuit hinged primarily on the parish’s 2014 land-use plan, which generally shielded white neighborhoods from industrial development and left majority-Black neighborhoods, schools and churches without the same protections. The plan also described largely Black sections of the parish as “future industrial” sites. The plaintiffs missed the legal window to sue the parish, the judge ruled.
Yet the parish’s land-use plan is just one piece of evidence among many revealing ongoing discrimination against Black residents in the parish, said Pamela Spees, a lawyer for the Center of Constitutional Rights representing the plaintiffs. They are challenging Barbier’s ruling under the “continuing violations” doctrine on the grounds that discriminatory parish governance persists, allowing for industrial expansion in primarily Black areas.
The lawsuit highlights the parish’s decision in August 2022 to impose a moratorium on large solar complexes after a proposed 3,900-acre (1,580-hectare) solar project upset residents of the mostly white neighborhood of Vacherie, who expressed concerns about lowering property values and debris from storms. The parish did not take up a request for a moratorium on heavy industrial expansion raised by the plaintiffs, the lawsuit states.
These community members “have tried at every turn to simply have their humanity and dignity be seen and acknowledged,” Spees said. “That’s just been completely disregarded by the local government and has been for generations.”
Another part of the complaint argues the parish failed to identify and protect the likely hundreds of burial sites of enslaved people by allowing industrial facilities to build on and limit access to the areas, preventing the descendants of slaves from memorializing the sites. The federal judge tossed out that part of the lawsuit, noting the sites were on private property not owned by the parish.
At its core, the complaint alleges civil rights violations under the 13th and 14th amendments, stating the land-use system in the parish allowing for industrial buildout primarily in majority-Black communities remains shaped by the history of slavery, white supremacy and Jim Crow laws and governance.
Lawyers for St. James Parish said the lawsuit employed overreaching claims and “inflammatory rhetoric.” St. James Parish did not respond to a request for comment.
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